A new, toxic element-free Mg-based metallic glass for biomedical applications

As part of a project to develop new and more performant types of metallic glass (MG) for use in biomedical applications, we developed a new ribbon-metallic glass with two different compositions, Mg(85 − x)Ca(8 + x)Au7 (with x = 0, 2, 4) and Mg(81 − x)Ca10Au7Yb(2 + x) (with x = 0, 8). The super-cooled liquid region was evaluated to be ΔT = Tx − Tg = 22 °C, where Tx is the temperature of crystallization and Tg is the glass transition temperature. The thermal stability of this material was investigated using different measurement methods. No crystallization was detected after 30 min at 120 °C, which is of major interest for sterilization processes in the medical field. Resistance to crystallization was also investigated. All the results highlight the suitability of this new metallic glass for biomedical applications.